


Ricordare

by paintedrecs



Category: SK8 the Infinity (Anime)
Genre: Alcohol, Bisexual!Joe, Childhood Friends, Families of Choice, Flashbacks, Friends to Lovers, Fuck That Guy (Adam), Gay!Cherry, Hair Washing, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Incredibly Slow Burn (on Kojiro's side), Kaoru POV, M/M, Past Sakurayashiki Kaoru | Cherry Blossom/Shindo Ainosuke | Adam, Physical Assault (Adam), Pining, Post Episode 9, Trauma, Unhealthy Relationships (Adam), injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-26 12:01:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30105651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintedrecs/pseuds/paintedrecs
Summary: When Kaoru was eight years old, he knew, somehow, that he and Kojiro would be friends forever. Not much had changed since then. They'd spent nearly two decades bickering, traveling the world, establishing their careers, and patching each other up every time they fell: out of love, or off their skateboards.They were friends. That'd always be true, no matter what else happened in their lives.It'd never occurred to Kaoru that they could be anything more—that the incredible, warm-hearted, muscle-brained, frequently irritating man who'd spent nearly twenty years by his side might've been in love with him all along.
Relationships: Nanjo Kojiro | Joe/Sakurayashiki Kaoru | Cherry Blossom
Comments: 31
Kudos: 355





	Ricordare

**Author's Note:**

> I've been stalled out for a while on a much longer fic for a different fandom. I took a short break to try out this new anime everyone was talking about. Fun enough, I thought, but I'm not overly invested...then episode 9 dropped, and I fell into a beautiful, devastating, absurdly romantic matchablossom pit. 
> 
> This spun out a little longer than I'd meant it to, but hey...so did Kojiro's life-changing crush on his best friend.

There’s a specific moment when your bones break, when time slows down and all your senses narrow to a single sensation. _Something’s wrong_ comes first, your brain kicking in a second before it happens—too late to stop the audible _snap_ that follows. It almost doesn’t hurt at first. With an injury that severe, your body is too flooded by adrenaline—by defense mechanisms that are meant to keep you moving until you’re safe—for the pain to register.

Kaoru had broken bones before. It was inevitable; spending that much time on a skateboard meant that by age fourteen, he’d memorized both the contents of his first-aid kit and the layout of the local hospital’s emergency room.

“Sakurayashiki,” the nurses on duty would sigh, disappointment fading to resignation—an expression Kaoru had seen too many times, on too many faces. “You know we’ll have to call your parents again.” 

Those bruises weren’t visible. They’d dug in deep enough to settle under his skin, leaving a constant, dull ache that only hurt when he pressed against them. Kaoru had learned, long before he picked up a skateboard, what level of pain he could tolerate without flinching.

He was fifteen when he placed his hand in Kojiro’s for the first time—gritting his teeth and growling at him to _just do it already_. Splinting a broken thumb still hurt, every time, but there was no reason to keep racking up hospital bills for minor cuts and scrapes. Kojiro’s fingers were deft and strong, and Kaoru trusted him. He always had.

When they were sixteen, Kaoru felt the _snap_ coming when he was still hurtling through the air, his skateboard clattering against the concrete, Kojiro’s eyes wide and terrified but his outflung arms too slow, too weak, to stop Kaoru’s fall. 

He’d spent thirty minutes sitting on the blood spattered asphalt behind the half-pipe, holding his elbow and trying desperately not to cry. It was broken; he didn’t need an x-ray to tell him that. But if he fought it hard enough—if he rewound time and pretended it hadn’t happened—maybe the bones would knit back together. Maybe he wouldn’t need to spend four hours in the ER’s overcrowded waiting room, shivering with pain and embarrassment, as Kojiro cracked jokes and brought him vending machine snacks and acted like he couldn’t see the tears streaking down Kaoru’s cheeks. 

After the third time, Kaoru’s parents had stopped showing up. They paid the bills, went on with their lives, and wished, Kaoru thought, that they’d had a son like the one whose broad, comforting shoulder was always pressed firmly against his. 

Adam never came to the hospital, either. 

“He can’t; you know how he is about showing his face in public,” Kaoru had argued a few weeks after his eighteenth birthday, hate flashing through him—not at the sight of Adam’s back, turned away from him and disappearing into the distance, but at the look in Kojiro’s eyes.

Kojiro’s lips had twisted with a bitterness Kaoru had never seen before—had never imagined his best friend was capable of showing. He slammed a bottle of water, then a coffee, on the table separating his chair from Kaoru’s. The can was dented on one side, where Kojiro’s fingers had dug into it.

“He’s your boyfriend,” Kojiro muttered. “He should be here.” His always smooth, laughter-tinged voice had gone dark and angry—almost unrecognizable.

Kaoru’s ankle throbbed. A hairline fracture, at best; he knew all too well how those felt, and how long they took to heal. It’d be six weeks, maybe seven, before he could put his full weight on it, much less skate. He shut his eyes, blocking out the harsh fluorescent lights and the infuriating tears that were welling up, threatening to spill over, and tried not to think about how cold his shoulder felt.

“He’s not,” he said, so quietly that it took a second for Kojiro to respond—to ask him to repeat himself. “We’re not dating,” Kaoru hissed again, in a harsh exhale that sent the words bouncing off the sterile white walls and echoing in his ears. 

Even back then, before he’d started packing on muscles, Kojiro had a way of _looming_ , of calmly pushing past any barriers between the two of them. They might not be physically touching, but Kaoru could feel him—the weight of Kojiro’s attention turning back where it’d always been. Fixed on him. Unwavering and solid. 

Like a boulder, Kaoru thought, with a surge of anger that made him want to take a sledgehammer to it—to shatter Kojiro’s stupid, boundless strength and make him stop _looking_ at Kaoru like he was something fragile. 

“But I thought,” Kojiro said, then flicked his eyes away for a heartbeat, almost shyly. “I mean, I saw you. Under the bridge, last week.”

Kaoru flushed.

 _Oops_ , Adam had said, still cupping the back of Kaoru’s head, holding him in place. He’d been hot and heavy on Kaoru’s tongue—not softening in the slightest when Kojiro had stepped into view, when he’d said Kaoru’s name in a tone he’d never used before. _I must’ve told him the wrong time._

These excuses tasted just as bitter, gathering thickly in the back of Kaoru’s throat. He filtered through them anyway, trying to find one that would fit. 

_Adam can’t show his face in a hospital—not with us, not where they might ask questions or check his ID._  
_We’re not dating because he can’t. Not me, not anyone._  
_His parents don’t know he’s gay._  
_It’d ruin his life, and any chance at a good career; you know it would._  
_My dad hasn’t looked me in the eyes, not once, since he found those magazines under my bed._

The truth was, he and Adam had never talked about what they were, or whether the sex meant anything at all. Adam had never even told Kaoru his real name.

Kaoru swallowed down the lies, the half-truths that kept his heart from fracturing along with his limbs, and said instead, stiffly, “I don’t need Adam to sit here and hold my hand. I don’t need you, either, you thick-headed oaf. If you’re tired of waiting, you can leave. It’s just a sprain; I’ll be fine.”

The tense, angry lines of Kojiro’s mouth softened, transforming him back into the kind-eyed boy who’d been glued to Kaoru’s side since they were eight years old, arguing over who got to take home the stag beetle they’d found on a tree at the edge of their playground.

 _My mom won’t let me keep it anyway_ , Kaoru had admitted, finally, after winning the most important battle: that he’d seen the beetle first.

 _Oh_ , Kojiro had said, his dark eyes filling with pity that had grated on Kaoru, just a little, until he’d announced—cheerful and friendly, with a smile so sunny it’d almost hurt— _That’s okay. You can come over any time. And you can name him, too, if you want. I’m not good at stuff like that._

Kaoru’s breath caught, embarrassingly, when Kojiro shifted seats, settling into the chair next to him and bumping their shoulders together. He was warm, and solid, and he didn’t have to say anything else. Kaoru understood the rest.

***

The skateboard was a surprise. The look on Adam’s face as he swung it—the open, dismissive disdain souring a mouth Kaoru had thought he’d known so well—shouldn’t have been.

Time froze for a few moments, as it always did.

 _This one will hurt_ , Kaoru thought, clear and calm, already calculating which part of his body would strike the ground first. He couldn’t do anything to stop it; he’d learned, from years of damaging experience, that bracing himself for the impact was counterproductive. 

He’d fallen before. He’d fall again: and again, and again, until he stopped putting himself in situations where it was inevitable to wind up a little bit broken.

 _Relax_ , he told himself. _It’ll be okay_. He loosened his muscles, and watched the sky slamming down to meet him, and just before his head ricocheted off the rock-strewn asphalt, he thought: 

_Shit. I’m sorry, Kojiro._

***

He didn’t lose consciousness; at least, not completely. He shut his eyes, wishing the lashes weren’t quite so sticky or damp, when Kojiro’s too bulky, too worried form loomed over him, blotting out the sky. Kojiro’s voice was laced with fury but still gentle, somehow; he shushed Kaoru when he tried to respond. 

“Call me Cherry, you overgrown idiot,” Kaoru managed anyway, and Kojiro laughed a little and apologized, his big hands sweeping over Kaoru’s torso, his legs, the wrist that Kaoru instinctively tried to jerk away from his touch. 

“Shh,” Kojiro said, sliding his fingers into Kaoru’s hair and cradling the side of his head instead. His eyes were soft and sad and so close—too close for public, for everyone at S, who could _see—_ “Stop bitching for a minute, okay? Help is on the way, but it’s gonna take a little while. I need to figure out where you’re injured.”

Kaoru bit back his reply, feeling slow and stupid. He’d read that wrong, just like everything with Adam. Back then, and now, with their pointless, one-sided beef. Kojiro was only doing what he always did; what they’d always done for each other, from the first time one of them had tumbled off a skateboard and scraped their palms bloody and raw.

“You were my first,” Kaoru said, muzzily. Kojiro’s face came in and out in strange, wavering glimpses. He was blurry; Adam’s skateboard had probably knocked one of Kaoru’s contacts loose. He’d have to ask Kojiro to look for it. Later. He’d tell Carla to set a reminder.

Kojiro’s movements stilled for a moment. “I’m not,” he said, then huffed out a quiet breath and explained, too gently, “It’s Joe. Adam’s not...I’m sorry, Cherry, he already left.”

“No,” Kaoru said, muffled, and, confusingly, choking a bit. Fabric peeled away from his lips, the cool night air rushing in to replace it; a thumb pushed inside his mouth, briefly, and fished out a damp shred of material he hadn’t realized was tangling around his tongue. He frowned, which hurt. Everything hurt. 

“It’s okay; I’m blocking the cameras,” Kojiro said. “No one else is seeing you like this. My unnecessarily bulky body’s gotta be good for something, right, Cherry?”

He lifted Kaoru’s head again—just a couple millimeters, enough to slip loops behind his ears and tuck a pale blue medical mask into place over his mouth and nose. “I know it’s not your style, you prissy four-eyed princess, but it’s all I’ve got on me,” Kojiro said, trying for a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

Kaoru licked his bleeding, chapped lips, grimacing when the swipe of his tongue met cotton that tasted a little like oregano. Another reminder for Carla; he’d ask Kojiro, later, how long he’d been carrying around an extra mask, waiting for something like tonight to happen.

“No,” he tried again. “I meant, you fell first. Remember?”

His eyelids were heavy; he let them slide back down, not needing to see Kojiro’s face. He’d still be there, no matter how long it took Kaoru to open them again. 

“I know I did; I didn’t think you’d noticed,” Kojiro said softly, his calloused thumb smoothing along Kaoru’s cheek. It didn’t hurt there, but if Kojiro was checking for damage, he must’ve scraped the skin. Kaoru turned his face into Kojiro’s warm, steady palm; that movement hurt a little, but it felt nice, too, in a way he couldn’t quite grasp.

Of course he’d noticed. Idiot. He’d tell Kojiro that, later, when he felt up to shaping words again. They’d been ten or eleven...no, Kojiro was ten, still, a month away from his birthday, and sulking because Kaoru was older. He’d always be just a little bit older. And wiser, Kaoru had claimed, even back then, with his brand new skateboard carefully set to the side as he’d investigated the dirt and gravel embedded in Kojiro’s scraped-up knees.

It was the first time either of them had stood on a skateboard, or tended each other’s injuries. Kaoru hadn’t known what to do, exactly, but splashing his water bottle over Kojiro’s reddened skin had seemed to help. It was mostly surface damage. No infections and not a whole lot of bleeding; only an ugly scab or two that Kojiro had picked off a few days later, laughing and calling Kaoru a nag.

 _It’s okay; it doesn’t hurt_ , he’d said, sweeping in to steal Kaoru’s skateboard out from under him while he was distracted. Kaoru had tackled him and taken it back. They were sharing, sort of, until Kojiro’s birthday came around, when he’d get his own.

After a little bit of wrestling, which Kaoru won—by virtue of being both older and, at that age, slightly taller—Kojiro had flopped onto the ground to watch Kaoru try out a kickflip.

 _Besides, girls like this kinda stuff. Scars are cool_ , Kojiro had said, grinning and waving at the group of giggling classmates who’d gathered on the other side of the playground. They just wanted to sit on the swings, they’d announced when they’d showed up after school.

The truth was obvious, and a little bit irritating. They were barely even trying to hide their blushing and hair-touching and smiling—something they’d started doing around Kojiro earlier that year, around the same time that he’d started to notice, and talk about, girls. 

Kaoru hadn’t yet; he was a late bloomer, maybe. He liked his skateboard, and computers, and art class, and hanging out with Kojiro. Girls were pretty, in the way that birds were, but Kaoru wasn’t particularly interested in either. 

He’d frowned, adjusting his feet to the positions he’d memorized from a half-dozen videos. The steps themselves were simple: back foot pushing the board down, front knee bent, foot flicking forward and to the side, with a hop in the air as the board spun, then— 

_Almost_ , he’d said, laughing, lying on the ground for a minute before taking Kojiro’s outstretched hand. 

_Plus,_ Kojiro had said, pulling Kaoru to his feet and smiling at him with that bright, intense focus that always made Kaoru’s heart flip a little in his chest, like the trick he hadn’t quite been able to manage. _I’m experienced now, Kaoru. My dad patched me up when I got home, remember? So when you get hurt, I’ll know how to take care of you._

***

The beeping was annoying. So were the nurses, who hovered and whispered and wrote things in his chart, and told him that if he tried disconnecting his heart monitor one more time, they’d tie his hands to the bed to make him stop.

To be fair, it was only one nurse who’d said the latter; Kaoru squinted at her for long enough to place her as someone who’d dated—or at least slept with—Kojiro for a couple of weeks back in August. That was probably why Kojiro had made his excuses ( _“sorry, gotta prep tomorrow’s courses and plan next week’s menus”_ ) shortly after the first round of Kaoru’s test results came flooding in. 

Mild concussion; sprained wrist and a fractured ankle. Plenty of scraped-up skin, a smattering of unattractive bruises, and cuts that looked worse than they were. No permanent damage, and nothing that required him to be hooked up to a machine that let out a constant, irritating series of high-pitched beeps that bounced around his aching skull, jarring his still-scrambled brains.

“I’ll check on you in the morning, okay?” Kojiro had promised, squeezing Kaoru’s uninjured hand and darting out of the room before the glowering nurse could return to fluff Kaoru’s pillows and order him to stay still.

She’d probably tied Kojiro to a bed at least once, Kaoru thought tiredly, wishing that mental image didn’t come through quite so vividly.

Then again, pretty much anything was better than the memory of Adam’s sneer, and the dark blur of a board hurtling towards his face.

He flinched awake for the fourth time, his bruised limbs tensing in a reaction he couldn’t control. Not here. Not surrounded by white walls and starched sheets and the judgment of people who’d never understand why someone like him would wind up in a place like this, collecting injuries he’d never been able—or willing—to explain.

 _But he’s from such a good family_ , they’d always murmured when he was a kid, whispers following him down hospital halls and into classrooms and through a series of post-college interviews, until he took out his lip ring and piercings and learned how to say exactly what people wanted to hear. 

Cherry Blossom still skated, most nights. Sakurayashiki Kaoru was a talented calligrapher, a sought-after public speaker, and, for the most part, a distinguished, respectable member of society. He was still gay, of course, but quietly, his private life shielded behind thick curtains that made it easy for others to ignore.

It worked well enough for him; he’d never been like Kojiro...or Adam. Even as Cherry, he didn’t see any need to flaunt who he was or who he fucked.

 _Eve_ , he thought, his lip curling as he sat up in bed, flinging his legs over the side—only wincing a little when he forgot, for a second, that his right arm was in a sling. Cherry or Kaoru—it didn’t matter. He was sick of lying in a hospital bed, staring at a blank ceiling and accomplishing nothing. At least Kojiro would feed him something decent. Probably.

***

Kojiro, predictably, was pissed about him sneaking out of the hospital. Kaoru sniped back at him, feeling more relaxed than he’d been in hours. He wasn’t hungry, really, or thirsty; the nurses had given him plenty of ice chips and water. He was just...tired. 

_Sia la luce_ was warm, and smelled like basil and oregano and tomato sauce and a little like coffee—Kojiro had probably been brewing some, or experimenting with a new dessert. Kaoru had enjoyed his take on tiramisu. Maybe Kojiro would bring him some, if he asked.

He fell asleep before Kojiro came back with the wine.

***

By his third day in a splint and a sling, Kaoru’s irritability had reached new heights. 

“This is useless; I can’t do anything,” he announced, wheeling into _Sia la luce_ shortly before closing—not that it mattered, since Kojiro rarely locked the door after flipping the sign. Most people understood that _Closed_ meant to stay out. For Kaoru, it served as a different signal: once Kojiro’s doors were shut to the public, he’d begin wiping down tables, turning on soft music, and setting aside a familiar pair of wine glasses.

“That’s not what you’ve said for the past three days. _I can take care of myself; your hovering is driving me crazy, you insufferable cabbage,_ ” Kojiro recited, his eyebrows tilting in unhappy lines that meant he wasn’t in the mood for their usual banter. He looked almost as tired as Kaoru felt: dark smudges under his eyes, with deep grooves at the corners that were usually smoothed out by a smile. Openly, annoyingly flirtatious, whenever women were around, and when it was directed at Kaoru— 

Kaoru blinked, unable to finish that thought. He’d gotten so used to how Kojiro looked at him that he had trouble summoning up a proper mental image. All he knew was that this—Kojiro’s current expression, tired and sad and strangely _worried_ —was wrong.

“Has the tournament been that bad?” he asked, after a quick glance around the restaurant that assured him that everything here, at least, was exactly as it’d always been. The truth was, Kaoru had been avoiding any mention of S since his...accident, as he’d put down on the required form. The tournament winner had never mattered to him; the answer he’d spent years looking for had already come as a literal blow to the face. But there were others still tied to the competition. Langa, most notably. While he seemed to have a solid enough head on his shoulders, Kaoru was intimately familiar with how dizzying Adam’s influence could be. “Did Adam—”

“Fuck Adam,” Kojiro growled, violently snapping the dishcloth that he’d been using to wipe the bar. 

If it’d been anyone else, Kaoru might’ve flinched. He tilted his head instead, examining the anger-clouded face he knew nearly as well as his own. Almost twenty years of friendship with someone who seemed, on the surface, as uncomplicated as they came. Kaoru was one of the few people who knew better. Even so, there were certain puzzling expressions that sometimes flickered across Kojiro’s features—there for a moment, then gone so quickly that Kaoru couldn’t fix them in his mind, or pick apart what they meant.

Kojiro was furious, now; that much was clear. There was frustration layered under that, with a spike of guilt and...something deeper and more complicated that he was doing his best to bury, even as Kaoru watched.

He couldn’t drag information out of his best friend—not if it was something the stubborn lunkhead didn’t want to share—but Kaoru always _had_ known exactly how to get a rise out of him.

“I’ve already fucked Adam,” he said calmly, picking up a bottle of wine and glancing at its label before tilting its slim neck into his glass. “It’s not something I recommend, or want to repeat.”

Kojiro’s head jerked up, as Kaoru had expected; his mouth dropped open, just a little, giving Kaoru time to sip smugly at his wine and judge the sloppy script scrawled across the chalkboard that the two of them had mounted behind the bar. Italian lettering, to fit with the restaurant’s theme: _Vitello Tonnato; Spaghetti Pomodoro e Basilico; Casoncelli Bergamaschi; Bigoli Al Sugo D'anatra; Panna Cotta._

All dishes that Kaoru had, at some point, taste-tested his way through, in exchange for his expert coaching in attractive penmanship.Kojiro had improved some, but the loops were still wobbly, with uneven spacing between the letters. Kaoru would have to set up another lesson, once his wrist had fully healed. 

“You know, we’ve hardly ever talked about that,” Kojiro said finally. He moved around the bar, taking the seat next to Kaoru, and the glass Kaoru poured for him. The wine was a deep, rich red—like the dangerous, fascinating glint that’d always lurked behind Adam’s eyes.

It’d been appealing, initially. Beautiful, mysterious, enchanting. Dishonest, as it turned out, but Adam’s eyes were a window into an entirely different world, one where Kaoru had felt seen. Understood. _Wanted_.

Maybe it’d been true back then. Or maybe Kaoru had spent years deceiving himself, longing for an idealized existence where “different” meant “special.” Where he could kick off the ground, spread his wings, and fly away from a mundane reality that had never quite seemed to fit him.

During their beef—after, when Kaoru was bruised and broken and shaking from the impact of shattered dreams—Adam’s eyes hadn’t been filled with hate. That would’ve been preferable. Instead, he’d looked _through_ Kaoru—idly, uncaring, like the moment he turned his gaze away, Kaoru would cease to exist. 

Kaoru poured himself another glass and asked, “Do you mean Adam? Or my sex life?”

“Both, I guess,” Kojiro said, with an odd awkwardness to his tone. There was a light flush along his cheekbones, and a flickering hesitance to his gaze that showed he was doing his best to _not_ avoid eye contact.

Kojiro ordinarily didn’t shy away from sex, or Kaoru’s sexuality. Regardless of his openly flaunted preference for women, he’d never been anything but steady and supportive, no matter what Kaoru revealed about himself. 

_I don’t think they’ll take me back_ , Kaoru had whispered at age fifteen, huddled in a corner of Kojiro’s room, his thin shoulders hunching over a manga volume that he was only pretending to flip through. He’d been shivering, still, from the words that had chased him from his house to the only one where he always knew he’d be welcomed.

 _You can live here_ , Kojiro had said, so easily, so simply, that Kaoru had almost believed it was possible. _I’ve got room, Kaoru._

 _On your dirty floor?_ Kaoru had sniffed, trying to sound disdainful instead of touched—and punctuating his criticism by flicking a crusty, disgustingly wadded up tissue at his best friend’s face.

Kojiro had yelped, and tackled him, scrubbing punishing knuckles against Kaoru’s scalp, and not seeming to care in the slightest that Kaoru had just told him he was attracted to boys.

“I guess I never really understood what you saw in him,” Kojiro said now, running his thumb along the curve of his glass, still not quite looking at Kaoru. 

It left Kaoru free to watch him instead. Every part of Kojiro was familiar and comforting. The strong line of a jaw that always seemed gentle, somehow; eyes that were soft and dark and filled with emotion Kaoru couldn’t bring himself to display so openly; glossy, lightly waved hair drifting from behind his ears and falling over his forehead; the slight uptilt of a nose that he’d playfully rubbed against Kaoru’s cheek more than once, breathing affectionate insults into Kaoru’s wine-flushed skin. 

“His skating was extraordinary,” Kaoru said, trying his best to remember why, at seventeen, he’d thought he’d love Adam forever. “He wasn’t like the rest of us; like anyone I’ve ever known. And the way he touched me, the way he looked at me...no one had ever looked at me that way before. Like I was...” He trailed off, caught, instead, on the word that Adam had spat out, in full view of the cameras and everyone Cherry knew.

“Beautiful,” Kojiro finished, getting it entirely wrong, but with something warm and strange in his inflection that pulled Kaoru’s attention back to him, the correction fading away before his lips could part to let it out.

“ _Adam_ was beautiful,” Kaoru said, feeling his forehead furrow a little as he pulled them back on topic. “I know that part won’t make as much sense to someone as straight as you, but—”

“I’m not straight,” Kojiro interrupted, turning sideways, towards Kaoru, to—to what, Kaoru couldn’t tell, too thrown by the unexpected contradiction. Kojiro wasn’t laughing, or smiling; not a joke, then, to knock Kaoru off balance. There was a twist to his mouth that seemed wounded, somehow. Amused, and insulted, all in one confusing mixture that choked off any possibility of an appropriate response.

Kaoru made his best attempt, anyway. “I’ve known you since you were eight,” he reminded him. “I’ve seen you kiss a thousand girls in that time. There were five different women, last week alone. You have fresh ones dangling off your arms every time I turn around. If you’re redefining language now—”

“I didn’t say I was gay,” Kojiro said—a second interruption that made Kaoru’s eyes narrow dangerously. Kojiro did grin now, sudden and lopsided, lifting his hands to fend off whatever wrath Kaoru was preparing to dole out. “Sorry, Kaoru. I’m not trying to...I just, I don’t _only_ like women. I’ve never said I did.”

“Well, you’ve certainly never told me you like _men_ ,” Kaoru retorted. 

Kojiro lowered his hands, and his gaze, and fiddled with the crisply-ironed edge of a cloth napkin. Kaoru had helped him pick those out, along with the glasses they were drinking from, and the paint on the walls; he’d left his mark everywhere in this restaurant, and in Kojiro’s life, for nearly _twenty years_ , during which...

“I guess there just wasn’t much point,” Kojiro said, quietly, flicking a glance up at Kaoru, like he was afraid, somehow, of rejection. “I do like women. I mostly like women, I think. I like...really pretty people, and it’s a whole lot easier to stick to the ones with soft hair and boobs.”

 _I have soft hair_ , Kaoru thought, in a moment of stupidity that he chose to blame on his recent concussion. He tilted his chin up, making his voice brisk and annoyed. “If that’s how you view women—breasts on legs—I’ll never understand _why_ so many of them flock to you. You disgusting brute,” he added, as an afterthought.

“I didn’t say anything about legs,” Kojiro replied, unrepentantly, not bothering to defend himself against accusations they both knew didn’t fit. The irritating truth was, promiscuity had never prevented Kojiro from being a perfect gentleman. The women didn’t fall into his arms _only_ because he’d spent so much time sculpting them into a ridiculous bulge of beefy muscle.

Kaoru shifted in his chair. His sloppily tied yukata—a chore, with only one functioning hand—slipped a little at the movement, revealing a pale stretch of skin that tugged Kojiro’s gaze down to his thighs. Kaoru might’ve missed it, if he hadn’t been paying such close attention. 

“But you’re right; I like those, too,” Kojiro said, the corner of his lips quirking up. Not flirtation; not in the way Kaoru was used to seeing from him. Just casual, unmasked admiration. 

Kaoru wanted to punch him.

Probably. 

He ignored the other, less sensible, impulses that flitted in after.

This was _Kojiro_ , he firmly reminded himself. His...perhaps not entirely straight best friend. 

“How long?” he demanded, leaning in to...yes, to threaten Kojiro more effectively. That was the only reason the two of them had ever swayed into each other’s spaces like this: proximity made it easier to convey a point. Even if he was looking at Kojiro’s mouth, now, a little more than he should.

“I don’t know,” Kojiro said, dipping his head down enough to meet Kaoru’s eyeline, to exhale warm, wine-scented breath in the bare space between his lips and Kaoru’s. They weren’t touching; they’d always been so careful to maintain just enough distance to keep their bodies from tangling. “Years, I guess.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Kaoru asked, a little quieter now. 

Kojiro shifted back in his chair, breaking their connection and lifting one hand to rub at the side of his neck. “There wasn’t much point, really,” he said, sounding awkward again, like they were tumbling into a conversation he’d never expected to have. “You give me shit about who I sleep with, sometimes, but you don’t really care, do you, Kaoru? So there was no reason for me to tell you that I...”

“That you...?” Kaoru prompted, frowning through the headache that he could feel pressing against the back of his eyes, as it’d done, off and on, for the past three days. His brain was still a little sluggish, processing information more slowly than it should.

Kojiro flicked his soft, dark, _beautiful_ eyes up at Kaoru. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.

“Oh,” Kaoru said.

“Yeah,” Kojiro said, with a smile that hardly lifted his lips at all.

They sat for a while, drinking their wine and letting that revelation sit between them.

“I’m surprised you never realized,” Kojiro said eventually. “I mean, I tried to kiss you in Paris.”

“You were drunk,” Kaoru said, dismissing the exchange as easily as he’d done back then. “You also asked me to marry you, that time I visited you in Milan.”

“Yeah,” Kojiro said, a hint of laughter in his voice. His mouth tugged up at the corner, his eyebrows lifting into that amused, exasperated expression that he only ever seemed to wear around Kaoru, in quietly intimate moments like this. “I thought _you_ were too drunk to remember that one, you bone-headed tease. I spent the whole next day terrified you’d never talk to me again, but you acted like it hadn’t even happened.”

“Because you didn’t _mean_ it,” Kaoru protested. “You’re a sex-crazed _ape_ who hits on every woman who crosses your path. Why was I supposed to think you were serious?”

Kojiro looked at him, then, with an intensity—an unfathomable level of affection—that stole the breath out of Kaoru’s lungs. “Because I missed you,” he said. “You know I almost dropped out of the culinary institute? If you hadn’t shown up then, crashing at my place and complaining about your cheapskate client, I might’ve just packed it in and come home. I hated not seeing you, Kaoru. I think that’s the longest it’s ever been.”

The two of them weren’t huggers, at least not with each other; they’d never had that kind of friendship. Not really, not since they were kids. When Kaoru had shown up at Kojiro’s door—the entrance to a tiny, cramped Italian room that his stupidly broad shoulders had barely seemed to fit in—he hadn’t expected the stunned look on his best friend’s face, or the choked-off noise Kojiro had made when he’d lunged forward to gather Kaoru into his arms.

Kaoru had hit him with his fan to make him let go—but only after he’d pushed his face into the curve of Kojiro’s throat for a handful of seconds, breathing him in. Comfort and safety, and the spiced cologne that he’d always bitched about but had missed so fiercely it made his lungs ache. Being there, with Kojiro again—it was the closest thing to home he’d ever known.

“There wasn’t any client,” he said.

Kojiro’s eyebrows scrunched in question. Kaoru occupied himself by adjusting his sleeve, shaking it down to cover the softly pulsing bracelet that was tracking his heart rate. He’d refused all Kojiro’s offers over the past few days to _take care of him_ , as he’d put it, or to drive him back to the hospital; Carla had watched over his vitals, waking him up periodically to be certain his concussion hadn’t progressed to anything more serious. He’d never _needed_ Kojiro. But sometimes, like during those first three months Kojiro had spent in Italy, away from him, Kaoru had felt restless and strange. As though something important—something crucial and irreplaceable—was missing from his life.

“I went to Italy to visit you, you pig-headed idiot,” he snapped, irritated that Kojiro was making him actually say it. “How did you not notice that I spent the entire week with you? I never met up with anyone. I didn’t even have my brushes with me.”

“I didn’t think about it,” Kojiro said, honestly, his smile so blindingly, stupidly bright that Kaoru hated him, a little bit. “I was too happy that you were there to care about anything else.”

They’d spent Kaoru’s last night in Milan at a bar. No, there’d been a restaurant, first, tucked into a tiny side street that Kojiro swore the tourists didn’t know. He’d propped his chin on his hand, smiling at Kaoru and watching him eat, until Kaoru kicked him under the table and hissed at him to stop being such a muscle-brained creep. The bar, in Porta Venezia, had come later. Parts of the evening were a little blurry; Kaoru had, admittedly, drunk quite a bit, doing his best to drown out the realization that he loathed the idea of going back to Okinawa without Kojiro.

Kojiro had chosen that particular location, Kaoru had assumed at the time, for his benefit. Kaoru had been vaguely insulted. He certainly didn’t require any help on that front, and, under those circumstances, with his time with Kojiro running thin, would’ve preferred a bar where half his energy wasn’t being wasted on deflecting other men’s unwanted advances.

It’d taken forty-five minutes—maybe an hour—for Kojiro to notice. To grab Kaoru by the hand and spin him onto the dance floor, tucking him against his stupidly bulky body and telling anyone who approached that Kaoru was taken. 

_È il mio ragazzo._

Kaoru hadn’t protested. He’d been drunk enough for it to feel nice—being in Kojiro’s arms, and letting the rest of the world fade away, just for one night.

He remembered Kojiro putting him into bed, later—removing his shoes, and his glasses, and sitting back on his heels with a laugh when Kaoru slapped at him for touching the wide band of his obi, which was still holding his blossom-patterned yukata in place.

 _You can sleep in that, then_ , Kojiro had said, grinning at him. He’d knelt by the side of the bed, propping his tanned, tattooed arms on the mattress, and stared quietly at Kaoru for a bit. 

_What?_ Kaoru had asked after a while, squinting at him to try to make sense of his distance-blurred face. 

_Nothing_ , Kojiro had said, then, _Hey, Kaoru?_

 _What_ , Kaoru had said again.

 _We could live here, you know_ , Kojiro had said, his voice low and relaxed—implausibly soothing—like it’d been for most of their lives. _I met this guy. I could work in his restaurant for a while. Save up for mine. We could get married._

 _You and your boss?_ Kaoru had asked, half-asleep but confused by the image Kojiro was painting.

 _No, you nearsighted dumbass_ , Kojiro had said, fondly, shifting so he could rub his thumb in a gentle, rhythmic sweep over the top of Kaoru’s outstretched hand. _You and me. We could get married here, Kaoru. Build a life._

 _Don’t be an idiot_ , Kaoru had replied, muffled by a jaw-stretching yawn that he couldn’t hold back. He might’ve tried, if there’d been anyone but Kojiro present, to see him this loose-limbed and sweat-damp and absurdly unattractive. But Kojiro was fine. He was safe; that’d always been true, from the moment they’d met. _And bring me some water. I’m thirsty._

 _Okay,_ Kojiro had said, squeezing Kaoru’s hand before letting go.

Neither of them had brought it up again. Not the next morning, or in any of the years since.

We could get married, Kaoru thought, looking at his frustratingly handsome, mind-blowingly selfless friend, and feeling his heart turn over strangely in his chest. He’d never pictured that kind of future. It hadn’t occurred to him that he could.

***

Hearing a confession like that, after a friendship as long and uncomplicated as theirs, should’ve shifted something in their dynamic. Maybe Kojiro would start treating him differently: flirting more blatantly, or talking to Kaoru the way he did his women, or _expecting_ something that Kaoru still wasn’t sure he wanted to give.

But the evening drew to its close, and morning came again, and he was still Kojiro. That day, and the next, the way he’d always been. It didn’t matter who he loved, or whether anything between them had a chance of happening; the important part was that he was Kaoru’s best friend, the man Kaoru trusted with a quiet certainty he’d never had any reason to question.

They bickered, and drank, and ate overly rich food, and talked about S, and Kojiro’s latest investor, and the clients whose work was piling up as Kaoru healed. 

The truth was, nothing had changed at all.

***

By the sixth day, Kaoru had decided, in no uncertain terms, that every last one of his doctors could go to hell, and there was really no logical reason for him to _not_ take Carla out for a little spin.

Kojiro, admittedly, had some grounds for the stream of insults he spilled when he sprinted out of his restaurant, sauce-stained apron flapping wildly in the breeze, to retrieve Kaoru from an alleyway five streets over where he’d had a relatively minor tumble.

“I’m not even injured,” Kaoru grumbled, letting Kojiro tuck Carla under one usefully muscular arm and pull Kaoru against him with the other.

“So you called me because you _enjoy_ lying on the sidewalk, with your overpriced robot rolling into traffic.”

“She knows to stop at the curb. And you can use her name,” Kaoru said, leaning into Kojiro a little more than was strictly necessary. His foot was properly splinted and didn’t hurt—not any more than usual. But walking was clunky and slow, and if he was forced to engage in something this degrading, he might as well make the most of it. 

“Hm,” Kojiro mused. “Coral? Claudette? I don’t remember.”

Kaoru huffed, and dug punishing fingers into Kojiro’s side. His right arm was still in a sling, but the left—currently wrapped around Kojiro’s waist—was as strong as ever. 

Kojiro flinched, and knocked their heads together—gently, careful to not actually jar anything sensitive. “What was that for, you sharp-boned dweeb.”

“For lying to me,” Kaoru said. “You remember the name of every woman you’ve ever slept with—I know, because you recited them, in chronological order, that time you dragged me to the onsen in Kyushu. Carla shouldn’t be difficult to fix into your pea-sized brain.”

“Hm,” Kojiro said again. “You know I did that because I was jealous?”

Kaoru—impatient as always—attempted a too-wide stride, then winced, and gritted his teeth when Kojiro automatically slowed to match his steps. “Of what, my infallible memory? My head for numbers?”

“Of the head that guy at the inn desperately wanted to give _you_ ,” Kojiro said, bluntly. “It’s stupid, I know, but...I wanted that trip to just be us. That’s why I ‘dragged’ you, in your words, to the mainland and then halfway up a mountain instead of just going someplace around here. And then as soon as we got there, you...” He cut himself off, his posture suddenly stiff with embarrassment. “Sorry,” he said, huskily. “We don’t need to talk about that.”

“I was flirting with him so I _could_ spend time with you, you feeble-minded oaf,” Kaoru said, squeezing Kojiro’s waist again—with far less of a pinch, this time, and no intent to inflict pain. Kojiro relaxed into the gesture, careful to guide Kaoru over an uneven ridge in the sidewalk. “You booked us at an onsen without telling me that’s what we were doing—or thinking about your tattoo. I was making sure it wouldn’t cause any problems.”

“Oh,” Kojiro said. “But I thought that...”

“I didn’t sleep with him. Not that it was your business. And not that it’s ever stopped _you_ when we were traveling together.”

“No,” Kojiro admitted. “But I...” He stopped, outside of Kaoru’s building, and unwound their limbs, turning to face him. He handed Carla over, then tucked back a long strand of hair that had fallen behind Kaoru’s glasses, making him blink in futile annoyance. “You know I’d quit all of that, if we...if you’d just tell me that you...They don’t matter to me, Kaoru. None of them ever have.”

Kaoru breathed, past the sudden lump in his throat, and thumped Carla gently against Kojiro’s chest. Kojiro took a step back, and quirked a smile at him, understanding that they needed to leave things here, for now.

“I’ve been bored out of my mind, lately,” Kaoru said. “Come over after you close. There’s a new season of that stupid drama you like. Unless you have other plans.”

“You know I don’t,” Kojiro said, holding the door of Kaoru’s building open for him, even though that wasn’t necessary, either. Kaoru had always functioned perfectly well on his own. 

***

“I can’t understand what you see in this trash,” Kaoru said later that evening. He’d wound up, somehow, lying on the couch with his head in Kojiro’s lap, three episodes into a season that made less sense as it went on. “The way everyone’s acting around her, you’d think removing her glasses gives her magical powers.”

Kojiro’s thumb smoothed behind Kaoru’s ear, nudging at the thin metal frame perched over them. “You take yours off, don’t you? _Cherry_.”

“Not because I think it actually changes my identity, you dimwitted buffoon. Contact lenses are safer at those speeds, especially when...”

The movement of Kojiro’s hand stilled, for a brief enough pause that it was barely noticeable. If Kaoru had been wearing glasses when Adam had smashed a skateboard across his face, the damage would’ve been much more extensive. Scars, a broken nose—possibly something worse, and irreparable, depending upon how the frames had bent and where the glass had flown.

“It’s supposed to be a Cinderella story,” Kojiro said, neatly sidestepping the topic that Kaoru had no interest in pursuing further. “If her coworker recognized her with her hair down, wearing a nice dress, the whole thing would be over in an hour, and we’d have to argue over what to watch next.”

“I have a well-stocked queue that doesn’t require any debate,” Kaoru said. “More importantly, why would she want to marry someone who hardly knows her?” 

“He’s attractive.”

“He’s an idiot.”

Kojiro laughed and loosened Kaoru’s hair tie, letting the long, heavy strands spill across his shoulder. “I guess you can’t help who you love.”

“It’s not love,” Kaoru insisted. “Not with the logic they’ve imposed. What happens when she puts on a wedding dress and makeup, and he doesn’t recognize the woman walking down the aisle? Or if, heaven forbid, she cuts her hair and changes her earrings? He’ll think he’s living with a stranger.”

Kojiro rubbed a lock of Kaoru’s hair between the pads of his fingers; soothingly, Kaoru thought at first, until he realized Kojiro was methodically working his way through a tangled snarl. On the screen in front of them, a traffic light turned red, tires screeched, and a woman shrieked, then crumpled to the ground.

“Wonderful,” Kaoru said. “Now we’re off to a touching reunion in a hospital bed. How entirely unexpected.”

“Probably a three-episode arc,” Kojiro agreed, finishing off the first knot and moving to the next. “Five, if he stumbles into the wrong room at first and tearfully watches over a woman he’s never met.”

“Maybe he’ll marry _her_ , then,” Kaoru said, letting his eyes slide shut. He didn’t particularly need to see the television to piece together what’d happen next. “Ayame can fall for her friend, instead. He seemed nice. And marginally less stupid.”

“You like nice men?” Kojiro asked, lifting Kaoru’s glasses away and pushing his knuckles into the line that’d pinched between Kaoru’s eyebrows—using just the right amount of pressure, countering the tension that Kaoru had begun to feel gathering there. He’d still been getting headaches, off and on, since his fall, although they were growing milder and less frequent. 

“I don’t particularly like anyone,” Kaoru said, mostly to be difficult. “But some things get clearer with age. Excitement doesn’t last. Neither will those two idiots, if they spend all their time gazing soulfully into each other’s eyes instead of building something more substantial.”

“An actual relationship,” Kojiro said, a little distracted; Ayame’s handsome coworker had found her, after all, and was stammering out some deeply emotional drivel about destiny and soulmates.

“Friendship,” Kaoru corrected. “Without that, nothing else matters.”

Kojiro’s fingers stilled again. 

They watched—well, in Kaoru’s case, listened—as Ayame and Junto swore eternal devotion to one another. A resolution this early in the season meant that in another half hour, one of them would probably develop amnesia. Or fall off a cliff.

“Do you remember, Kaoru—” Kojiro said as the credits for that episode rolled. “We must’ve been...sixteen, I think. We’d been in and out of the hospital so much by then that you joked we’d be able to find our way through the ER blindfolded. On skateboards.”

“ _You_ said that. I told you to prove it.”

“And we got caught,” Kojiro said, laughter in his voice. He scratched lightly at the base of Kaoru’s neck, then pushed his fingers up, along Kaoru’s sensitive scalp. Kaoru shivered, trying not to make a noise at how good that felt. 

“Because we were sixteen and stupid,” he said, as evenly as he could manage.

“Yeah,” Kojiro said. “And because the nurses changing shifts at 4 AM didn’t actually mean no one would be around to see us knocking over empty IV stands and bumping into walls. Don’t think I forgot _that_ part was your idea.”

“Well, one of us had to be the brains of the operation,” Kaoru said. “I thought a Wednesday shift would be quieter. Maybe that was where we went wrong; on a busy night, we might’ve slipped through unnoticed.”

“We could try again.” 

Kaoru scoffed. “At your size? We’d be ushered out the moment we stepped inside. Leave that for the new crop of teenagers. You can suggest it to Reki the next time you see him.”

“He’s been through enough lately,” Kojiro said. Thoughtful, as always; he treated the kids from S the same way he did his sisters. “We both got grounded for that, remember? Two weeks with no games, no TV.”

“No skateboards.”

Kojiro lightened his touch as he reached the area where Kaoru’s head had bounced against the asphalt—where the skin had split, and bled, soaking his sakura-pink hair a deeper shade of red. “I used to think you were mad at me for that. There was a month, maybe, where you stopped sneaking out at night, and you’d barely talk to me at school. And then when you finally showed up again, you had a whole new board.”

And a fresh set of piercings, that Kaoru had done himself: furious and defiant, hammering a few more nails into what was left of his relationship with his family.

“They took my board,” Kaoru said. “Not for two weeks. For good.”

“I would’ve loaned you mine. Or the money for a new one, so you could’ve come back sooner,” Kojiro said, sounding exactly like he had back then, when he’d looked at Kaoru with wide, wounded eyes, wondering what he’d done wrong—why they weren’t friends anymore. 

Kaoru had never told him the full story. The lectures; the punishment; the deep-rooted embarrassment over the Sakurayashiki heir, their only son, engaging in such childish, publicly visible, property-damaging pranks. It’d taken a month for his parents’ newfound interest in him to die back down; for his father to go on another business trip, and his mother to settle into her old routine of charity clubs and shopping sprees and conveniently forgetting her delinquent son existed.

“They banned _you_ , Kojiro,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

Kaoru sighed, and rubbed his cheek against Kojiro’s leg—just a little, as a reminder that Kojiro was still there, that something as small and insignificant as that incident hadn’t made any lasting impact on his life, or their friendship.

“It was the final straw. An excuse, more likely. If they were ever going to get me to toe the family line, they realized they’d have to take away everything that mattered most to me. My skateboard; my computer. My art supplies. And you, Kojiro. They called you a bad influence—as though _you_ were the one corrupting _me_.”

The long-forgotten drama carried on in the background, a low hum of music and badly-written dialogue that was easy to filter out.

“My parents actually tried that, too,” Kojiro said.

Kaoru opened his eyes, tilting his head back to look at him. 

“Not for the same reasons. Bad influences or whatever bullshit your parents were using to control you. Mine liked you a lot; they still do, Kaoru, you know that. It’s just that, ah...” Kojiro cleared his throat, the flush along his cheekbones visible, even without the aid of Kaoru’s glasses. “My mom sat me down and had a really long, and kind of awful, conversation with me about hormones and bad decisions and whether _liking_ someone meant that you had to destroy an entire hospital wing just to impress them. Both she and my dad thought that I might, ah. Need a little bit of a break from you, while I sorted out my feelings.”

Kaoru stared up at him, momentarily stunned into silence. “When we were sixteen?” he asked once he’d found his voice again.

Kojiro’s flush deepened. “Yeah.”

“But that was before we’d even met Adam.”

“Yeah,” Kojiro said again. He lifted his hand out of Kaoru’s hair and rubbed at the side of his neck. “I mean, that was just when my parents figured it out. Maybe when I did, too. I think I’d probably liked you for a while before that—years, maybe—but I liked girls, too, so.” He shrugged, and gave Kaoru a lopsided smile. “I just wanted to be around you all the time, Kaoru. Seeing you was the best part of every single day, and I couldn’t breathe sometimes when you looked at me, or touched me. I guess you’re right; I can be pretty stupid. Took me ages to understand what any of that actually meant.”

It was pointless to keep going down this path, to ask: _Why didn’t you ever say anything?_

If Kojiro had, back then, would Kaoru have looked at him differently? As not just a friend, but a guy he’d want to date—someone he’d kiss behind the skate park or underneath a bridge, sliding desperate hands under restrictive clothing and chasing that sweet, sharp ache that he’d first felt around Adam.

When Kojiro dropped his hand back down, he did so hesitantly, like he wasn’t certain he was still allowed to bury his fingers in Kaoru’s hair. Kaoru arched into the touch, enough to let Kojiro know he was welcome—without overtly _begging_ for further contact, since that’d be beneath him. Kojiro chuckled.

“What?” Kaoru said, irritably. 

“Nothing,” Kojiro replied, smoothing out the strands that’d been falling into Kaoru’s face. “Just, sometimes you remind me of that grumpy little fox, at Oka’s shop.”

Kaoru narrowed his eyes. Everyone in the local skate community knew Sketchy. Kaoru, valuing the sanctity of his fingers and the need to keep them intact for both work and his private life, had mostly kept his distance. His primary impressions were of orange fur, sharp teeth, and huge ears overpowering a tiny frame. “If you’re making some sort of a dig at my perfectly respectable size, you weightlifting gorilla—” 

Kojiro retaliated by scrubbing gently behind Kaoru’s ear, in a perfect, practiced movement that made Kaoru arch into it again—more obviously this time, with his legs extending and toes curling. 

“Exactly like that,” Kojiro said, sounding smug. “You know, sometimes that little monster lets me pet him for twenty minutes straight, acting like he’s never liked anything better in the world. Last week, he bit me three times. Look, Kaoru. I think the last one’s gonna leave a scar.”

He dangled his fingers in front of Kaoru’s face; Kaoru, instinctively, snapped his teeth at them.

Kojiro’s smile was so bright, so affectionate, that Kaoru had to turn his head away and dig his chin into Kojiro’s thigh to escape its blinding heat.

“You wanna know the truth, Kaoru?” Kojiro asked, his voice dipping lower, almost blending into the fresh professions of love that were filtering from the TV screen. Kaoru had entirely lost track of the couple’s tumultuous path to happiness, but judging from the uptick in romantic music, they’d fallen into each other’s arms once more.

“If it’s another comment on my prickly, violent personality, I’m not interested,” Kaoru said.

Kojiro laughed. “It’s not. Or, well—that’s one of the things I like about you. But back then, Kaoru, you were pretty much my entire world.”

“You’d dated at least seven different girls by the time we were sixteen,” Kaoru said. Not like he’d been counting. “And we had plenty of other friends. You weren’t lonely.”

“No,” Kojiro said. “But when my parents tried to take you away from me, even for a week or two, I...I don’t know. I panicked. I told them they could do anything else they wanted. Pull me out of school and tutor me at home. I’d quit skating forever. I’d cook every single meal and wash all the dishes, too. I just. I couldn’t lose you, Kaoru. Anything else would be fine; I’d deal with it, I’d adjust. But if you were gone, if you weren’t a part of my life anymore, I...”

His fingers pushed through Kaoru’s hair, his thumb sweeping along the back of Kaoru’s scalp again—methodically, tenderly, each movement mapping out Kaoru’s injuries. The worst cuts had scabbed over; they were invisible now, to most people. Kojiro knew every one of Kaoru’s scars.

There were a lot of things Kaoru could say in response. None of them seemed adequate.

Kojiro exhaled quietly, shifted a bit underneath Kaoru, dug his fingers a little deeper, and asked, “Have you bathed recently? Like in the last two days, because your hair’s kinda...”

There were certain things you didn’t do with your best friend: like punch him in the face or kick him, abruptly, out of your apartment and down the stairs for good measure. It wasn’t always easy for Kaoru to remember those rules. 

***

“Wait until you break _your_ dominant hand; we’ll see how well you manage,” Kaoru grumbled a handful of minutes later, sitting straight-backed and angry on a stool in the bathroom while Kojiro guided the showerhead over his only slightly greasy scalp.

“I did, at the beginning of college, remember?” Kojiro said. “But my hair was pretty short, and I was dating Yumeko then, so, y’know. Not a lot of unmet needs.”

“You’re disgusting,” Kaoru said, tilting his head into the warm, sudsy rush of water as Kojiro scrubbed carefully at all the areas he hadn’t been able to reach on his own.

“I’m just saying. You and Carla might have this great little love affair going, but she can’t climb into the bathtub with you. You should’ve told me earlier.”

“And say what, exactly? Please come over and help me bathe, Kojiro, I can’t wash myself properly on my own?”

“Yeah,” Kojiro said, easily. “I mean, we’ll probably be doing this for each other when we’re like, eighty. Might as well start now.”

“That’s disturbing,” Kaoru said. His heart flipped a little, stupidly; he scowled into the mirror, making sure Kojiro would catch it.

“It’s life,” Kojiro said, smiling at him, as Kaoru knew he would. “And I already told you I want to spend the rest of mine with you. It’s not such a big deal if I have to see you naked and wrinkly sometimes.”

“ _You’ll_ be covered in wrinkles,” Kaoru retorted. “Some of us know how to protect ourselves from sun damage.”

“Yeah,” Kojiro said, relaxed and casual, like they did this sort of thing every day. “But you’d still love me, right, Kaoru?”

“...yes,” Kaoru said, so quietly that he wasn’t certain Kojiro had heard him.

***

“I suppose I should thank your endless stream of girlfriends for this particular skill?” Kaoru asked, a little waspishly, when Kojiro proved to be a bit too handy with a hairdryer and a comb, which he was using to gently smooth out the rest of Kaoru’s tangles. 

“It’s from having little sisters, actually,” Kojiro said, laughing. “Hold still for a minute, we’re almost done. And you can stop pretending it doesn’t feel nice.”

“If you’re going to treat me like a _sister_ , we can be done now,” Kaoru said, with a huff and an eye roll that he knew Kojiro saw.

“I didn’t say that,” Kojiro responded, bending down to press a brief, decidedly non-fraternal kiss against Kaoru’s bare shoulder. “But you’re not really giving me clear signals, Kaoru. I’m not about to fuck up the most important relationship in my life by making a move too soon.”

Too soon, he’d said, as though _twenty years_ might be cutting it a little close.

Kaoru shut his mouth, and his eyes, and let himself enjoy the physical contact he’d never realized he’d wanted. Not from Kojiro, anyway. Not like this.

***

Kojiro helped him get dressed, too, although that part wasn’t strictly necessary.

“You’ve been doing all this one-handed, huh?” Kojiro said, wrapping the obi around Kaoru’s waist, then checking the fit—not too tight, not too loose—before he secured it into place. “You really are the most stubborn person I’ve ever met.”

“And you love me for it,” Kaoru said.

Kojiro’s hands froze at Kaoru’s hips. He looked up, his mouth parting, just a little, with no words coming out.

Kaoru had seen a flash of wine-rich red behind Kojiro’s eyes sometimes, too. Like Adam’s, in a way, but...no, with Kojiro, it’d always been different. Warm and welcoming, like campfires and cooking flames. Like the flambé that he’d made for Kaoru in their tiny rented kitchen, that last night in Paris, before he’d gone in for a kiss that Kaoru had, without meaning to, rejected.

Adam was filled with fireworks and heat-searing explosions. He was a wildfire—an inferno. A captivating, raging conflagration you couldn’t look away from, no matter how hard you tried. Kojiro was...

He was Kaoru’s best friend. 

“Yeah,” Kojiro said, answering the question Kaoru should’ve asked many years ago. “You know I do. I think I’ve loved you my entire life, Kaoru. Not really planning to quit now.”

Kaoru braced his palm against Kojiro’s firm chest, feeling the throb of his heartbeat—steadying himself. 

Falling hurt; Kaoru had learned that at an early age. He’d never had any reason to believe otherwise. Those first few breathless moments, when time stood still, always felt the same.

The clock on Kaoru’s bedroom wall went silent, its second hand shuddering, holding its place, waiting for Kaoru to react. To curl up in defense, or to embrace the inevitable: to hope that, for once, he might not shatter on impact. 

Falling hurt. It always had. 

But this time, Kojiro was there to catch him.

**Author's Note:**

>  _[Ricordare](https://www.thoughtco.com/italian-verb-conjugations-ricordare-4085513)_ : "It was once believed that we retained memory in our hearts. Hence in Italian, the act of remembering is ricordare, from the Latin recordare—the prefix re indicating _return backwards_ and cordis meaning _heart_."
> 
>  _"È il mio ragazzo."_ (He's my boyfriend.)
> 
> You can find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/paintedrecs/status/1372338503854419968?s=20) or [tumblr](https://paintedrecs.tumblr.com/post/645951348541620224/ricordare-fandom-sk8-the-infinity-rating-teen) under the same username, probably talking about fifteen different shows at once, and slamming the reblog button every time I see Joe smiling at Cherry in _that_ way. You know what I mean.
> 
> Comments, kudos, keysmashing expletives about how effing beautiful Kaoru is and how much Kojiro needs to KISS HIM ALREADY...all are welcomed.


End file.
